10 Things You Didn’t Learn in Law School

If there’s one thing most lawyers agree on, it’s that law school taught them very little about actually practicing law and running a law firm. In fact, this very issue was discussed during a recent presentation at my alma mater, Albany Law School, when Villanova Law Professor Michelle Pistone spoke to the Albany Law School faculty on the topic of “How Emerging Innovations Will Disrupt Legal Education.” During her presentation, she stressed how little law school education has changed despite rapid technological advancements. She asked attendees, “In light of these changes, have law schools changed enough?” Her response? “Law schools have not changed much in the last 100 years.”

Professor Pistone is not alone in her observations. In fact, there’s a growing debate amongst law professors these days about the importance of teaching practical skills in law school. That this debate is occurring is a promising sign since the first step to fixing a problem is to acknowledge it. The next step, of course, is to identify the practical knowledge that law schools are failing to teach their graduates and then arm newly graduated lawyers with the resources and knowledge needed to fill in the gaps.

So what exactly are the skills that law schools are failing to teach? I would suggest that, more often than not, freshly minted attorneys lack knowledge related to the practical, day-to-day skills needed to run a successful law practice. In other words, most new graduates lack the law practice management skills necessary for sustaining a profitable, busy law practice in the long run.

Now that we’ve identified the knowledge gaps, let’s take the next step. Starting next week, I’ll examine each of these skills in turn over the next few months in 10-part series of blog posts (the completed post are now linked to above). In each post, you’ll learn why a particular skill is important and I’ll suggest resources and information for lawyers seeking to increase their knowledge about that skill.

Next week, in the first installment of this series, we’ll focus on billing and back office accounting systems. You’ll learn how important an effective accounting system is to running an efficient and profitable law practice. We’ll find out what lawyers really want from billing and accounting systems and will explore how accounting systems can be effectively integrated into the day-to-day aspects of running a law practice. We’ll also summarize our findings in a handy infographic, so tune in next week for Part 1 of this series!

Nicole Black is an attorney and the Legal Technology Evangelist at MyCase. Her legal career spans nearly two decades and she has extensive litigation experience. She was named an inaugural ABA Legal Rebel in 2009 and an inaugural Fastcase 50 in 2011. She is also a well known legal technology author, journalist, and speaker. She wrote "Computing for Lawyers" (2012) and co-authored "Social Media: The Next Frontier" (2010), both published by the American Bar Association. She also co-authors "Criminal Law in New York," a Thomson West treatise. She often speaks at conferences about the intersection of law, mobile computing and Internet-based technology. She can be reached at niki@mycase.com.

3 comments

econwriter5

I’ve always found it curious that law school teaches about the law, but nothing about business while business school teaches about business, and something about the law. It seemed like some law schools figured this out when they started offering joint JD/MBAs, but the debate on the usefulness (or uselessness) of a business degree superseded the same debate on a law degree and few seemed to take advantage of the joint degrees.

Part of it might also have to do with semantics. Running a “law practice” v. a “business” or “small business.” The framing is confusing so it is of little surprise graduates are also confused.

nikilblack

Probably has something to do as well with how long law schools have been around vs. business schools. Law has been taught using something similar to the current format for such a long time now and the legal field is precedent-based. Unfortunately many of my colleagues in academia are reluctant to transition. Thanks for the comment!

econwriter5

For sure. Law, and medicine, are the stragglers when it comes to change. And until lawyers started connecting how useful technology is in their every day lives, there was little need to use technology in law practice, let alone change legal education. The trend has found its way, finally, but legal education still has little incentive to embrace it.

Drop in enrollment will wake some up. Changing a cirriculum is no easy feat, especially since the ABA has standards for accreditation that are now a strain on resources (and/or arcane).